High-powered World Athletics officials land to assess U20 preps

A delegation of 19 high-powered officials from the World Athletics Tuesday  jetted in the country to assess progress made by Kenya ahead of the 2020 World Under-20 Championships set to be held in Nairobi in July.

The officials drawn from various departments of the world athletics governing body’s Monaco headquarters are expected to inspect the progress made so far by the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) in preparing for the championship primed for July 7 to 12.

This will be World athletics’ third visit for inspection having visited twice last year and the Organising Committee (OC) chief executive officer, Myke Rabar said the officials will have day-long meetings on Wednesday and Thursday with the various departments within the Organising Committee.

Rabar noted that the visit will inspire the committee to launch the final phase of the preparations and have everything rolling on time.

“This visit is extremely important for Kenya and will effectively kick off the final leg of our preparations to host yet another successful global competition,” said Rabar.

The officials are expected to be engaged with various departments for the entire day Wednesday and Thursday before flying back.

The delegation that arrived in batches , include—Matt Hartfree (event presentation team), Zacharias Vailakis (press Operations manager),Olaf Brockmann (press delegate), Gemma Castano (technical delegate), Florian Weber (event presentation manager), Luca Sperotti (technical suppliers – deltatre), Jan Zmek (Dentsu), Luis Saladie (head of competitions management), Jeff Chelpi (event operations coordinator) and Fanny Boquillet (head of planning & strategy).

Others are Lavinia Maffia (partnerships manager), Imre Matrahazi (technical delegate), James Lord (director of broadcasting), Fred Sanchez (broadcasting manager), Maria Ramos (brand & marketing), Gareth Raw (systems and cyber security manager), Phil James (technical suppliers – Seiko), Mark Fulton (WA production/live sports producer/director), Sue Hellewell ( WA head of production).

Kenya won the bid to host the World Under-20 Championships following a largely successfully World Under-18 Championships held in 2017 with a record turnout of over 60,000 fans attending the event at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.